The rule of thirds is one of the most basic composition guidelines in photography. The rule of thirds makes use of a natural tendency of the human eye to be more strongly drawn towards certain parts of an image.
The rule states that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. The four points where these lines intersect are strongest focal points. The lines themselves are the second strongest focal points.
To use the rule of thirds you need to imagine the grid on all of your images as you compose them in the viewfinder. If you have an autofocus camera You can use the autofocus points as references to help you imaging the grid. If you use the LCD screen to compose your images some cameras have an option to draw this grid on the LCD when you compose the picture.
Which point or line you place your subject on does matter. While any of the points/lines will add emphasis to your subject, some are stronger than others. When an object is alone in an image, the strongest position is the left hand line. When a subject is not alone there is a hierarchy of image strength. The subject in the foreground will naturally have more strength than the subject in the background. However, the rule of thirds placement can emphasize or reduce this strength. The bottom right point is the strongest for multiple subjects and the upper left point is the weakest. This theory is often used in movies to convey the emotional dominance of one character over another. Placing a background subject on the right and the foreground subject on the left will confuse the eye and lead to confusion in the viewer about which subject is dominant. This technique is very useful for emotionally-charged images.
Another general rule (although this rule can be broken in certain circumstances) is that your subject should be placed on the opposite line of the direction your subject is looking towards. For example, a portrait where the subject is looking to the left should place the subject body on the right.
While most good portraits appear to be simply a centered torso they are following the rule of thirds. In the case of single portraits, the subject’s eyes are placed along the top rule of third line. In multiple subject portraits the subject faces are placed on the rule of thirds lines. This is why a multiple-row posing generally works better than a one-row posing.
The rule of third technique works well with all subjects but is particularly effective when you are photographing a relatively small subject surrounded by a large expanse of space or against a plain background. The visual weight of your subject balances the vast emptiness. A sailboat on a calm sea centered in the frame appears stagnant and overwhelmed by its surroundings, but if it is placed at a thirds intersection, its position fulfills our need for a dynamic visual tension.
You can also use thirds to help organize and support secondary subjects by setting them at diagonally opposite intersections—for example, placing a lone oak tree (the main subject) at the lower left juncture and the rising full moon (a secondary subject) diagonally opposite and above at the upper right intersection. Again, balance and dynamics.
Thirds divisions can also help you decide where to place the horizon. If you place it along one of the two frame divisions, you have a quick and effective shortcut for deciding how to arrange the composition. Imagine, for instance, that you’re photographing a Caribbean beach scene that includes sand, sea, and sky. Placing the horizon at the upper line gives the sky one third of the frame and the foreground two thirds, accenting the beach and water. Conversely, placing it along the bottom division line accents the sky by giving it two thirds of the frame. You can use the same principle whether you’re shooting horizontally or vertically.
While it’s best to get the image perfect in camera, don’t forget there’s much you can do after the fact to greatly improve many photos. Cropping an image after the capture allows you to apply some of the rules of composition, even if you didn’t get it quite right in the camera. For example, a cluttered scene can be cleaned up by cropping out unnecessary elements. A subject placed in the center of the frame can be moved off center by cropping the image accordingly.
Part of the beauty of digital photography is that you can continue to improve your images with tremendous control, even after the picture has been taken. And doing so will help give you a better understanding of what you might want to do differently the next time you’re out taking pictures.
Metering mode refers to the way in which a camera determines the exposure. Cameras generally allow the user to select between spot, center-weighted average, or multi-zone metering modes. Various metering modes are provided to allow the user to select the most appropriate one for use in a variety of lighting conditions.
SPOT METERING: With spot metering, the camera will only measure a very small area of the scene (between 1-5% of the viewfinder area). This will typically be the very center of the scene, but some cameras allow the user to select a different off-center spot, or to recompose by moving the camera after metering. Spot metering is very accurate and is not influenced by other areas in the frame. It is commonly used to shoot very high contrast scenes. For example, if the subject’s back is being hit by the rising sun and the face is a lot darker than the bright halo around the subject’s back and hairline, spot metering allows the photographer to measure the light bouncing off the subject’s face and expose properly for that, instead of the much brighter light around the hairline. The area around the back and hairline will then become over-exposed. Spot metering is a method upon which the zone system depends. Another example of spot metering usage would be when photographing the moon. Due to the very dark nature of the scene, other metering methods tend to overexpose the moon. Spot metering will allow for more detail to be brought out in the moon while underexposing the rest of the scene.
CENTER-WEIGHTED AVERAGE METERING: In this system, the meter concentrates between 60 to 80 percent of the sensitivity towards the central part of the viewfinder. The balance is then “feathered” out towards the edges. Some cameras will allow the user to adjust the weight/balance of the central portion to the peripheral one. One advantage of this method is that it is less influenced by small areas that vary greatly in brightness at the edges of the viewfinder; as many subjects are in the central part of the frame, consistent results can be obtained.
AVERAGE METERING: In this metering mode the camera will use the light information coming from the entire scene and averages for the final exposure setting, giving no weighting to any particular portion of the metered area.
PARTIAL METERING: This mode meters a larger area than spot metering (around 10-15% of the entire frame), and is generally used when very bright or very dark areas on the edges of the frame would otherwise influence the metering unduly. Like spot metering, some cameras can use variable points to take readings from, (in general autofocus points), or have a fixed point in the center of the viewfinder. Partial metering is found mostly on Canon cameras.
MULTI-ZONE METERING: Here the camera measures the light intensity in several points in the scene, and then combines the results to find the settings for the best exposure. How they are combined/calculated deviates from camera to camera. The actual number of zones used varies wildly, from several to over a thousand. However performance should not be concluded on the number of zones alone, or the layout. In general, the most advanced metering is found on DSLR cameras.
With this lesson we conclude the technical part of this beginners tutorial. For anything else you want to know about please let me know. In the next lessons I will start talking about composition and other important aspects that you need to know to be able to take photos that will be appreciated. Stay tuned!
White balance is a digital camera setting that allows the colors in your photos to appear accurately. White balance gets it’s name because if a photo has correct white balance, things that are white in reality appear white in the photo. All other colors appear accurately too – blacks are pure black and gray are pure gray with no other colors mixed in.
Why do we need white balance? Different light sources produce different colored light. For example, household light bulbs contain a gas called tungsten which produces an orange colored light, flourescent bulbs produce a greenish colored light, etc.
You’ve probably seen photos with incorrect white balance that were taken indoor without a flash. These photos tend to take on either a green or orange tint depending on what kind of lights are in the room. This happens because the camera sees the world differently than the human eye. While our eyes are able to automatically correct colors accurately, the camera is not capable to do that.
Correct white balance is important for many reasons. In portrait photography skin tones need to appear accurately because greenish or yellowish skin tones look unnatural. In product photography it is important for the colors to appear accurate so that the consumer knows exactly what he is getting. Also, when taking multiple photos of one thing it’s important to have consistent white balance so that the colors in the photos all match.
So what white balance should you use? In order to get the most faithful color representation you should use the SAME white balance mode as your MAIN source of light. For example, if your house is lit by 5 flourescent lights and and one regular light bulb – you should set your camera to flourescent white balance. If you are inside during daytime and all the windows are open and only one light bulb is on, you should probably use the daylight white balance. If your camera has a custom white balance setting then you can take a picture of a white paper and take the white balance from that picture. This is one of the most accurate mode to set the white balance. See your camera manual to find out how to do that. Experiment and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Learning to use white balance properly takes a lot of practice.
APERTURE PRIORITY MODE (A or AV): This mode is really a semi-automatic (or semi-manual) mode where you choose the aperture and the camera chooses the shutter speed so as to ensure you have a well balanced exposure. Aperture priority mode is useful when you’re looking to control the depth of field in a shot (usually a stationary object where you don’t need to control shutter speed). Choosing a larger number aperture means the aperture is smaller and lets less light in. This means you’ll have a larger depth of field (more of the scene will be in focus) but that your camera will choose a slower shutter speed. Small numbers means the opposite (if your aperture is large, depth of field will be small and your camera will probably choose a faster shutter speed).
SHUTTER PRIORITY MODE (S or TV): Shutter priority is very similar to aperture priority mode but is the mode where you select a shutter speed and the camera then chooses the aperture. You would use this mode where you want to control over shutter speed (obviously). For example when photographing moving subjects (like sports) you might want to choose a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion. On the flip-side of this you might want to capture the movement as a blur of a subject like a waterfall and choose a slow shutter speed. You might also choose a slow shutter speed in lower light situations.
PROGRAM MODE (P): Some digital cameras have this priority mode in addition to auto mode. In those cameras that have both, Program mode is similar to Auto but gives you a little more control over some other features including flash, white balance, ISO etc. Check your digital camera’s manual for how the Program mode differs from Automatic in your particular model.
MANUAL MODE (M): In this mode you have full control over your camera and need to think about all settings including shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, flash etc. It gives you the flexibility to set your shots up as you wish. Of course you also need to have some idea of what you’re doing in manual mode so most digital camera owners tend to stick to one of the priority modes.
I’ve decided to talk about Exposure Time and Aperture in the same lesson because it is a strong relation between them, which I’ll explain later. First I will discuss about each of them to help you understand them better.
EXPOSURE TIME: The Exposure Time is the period of time in which the sensor will be exposed to light. This is done in the moment push the button to take the picture. A mechanism inside the camera will open for the precise amount of time that has been manually set or automatically calculated by the camera. The exposer time on a digital camera can vary in a wide range. For example, on my Canon 450D DSLR the exposure time interval is from 1/4000 to 30. That means that I can expose the sensor from the tiny amount of time that is 1/4000 of a second up to 30 seconds. This is set accordingly to light conditions where the picture is taken.
APERTURE: This is a little more complicated to understand than exposer time, but I’ll try to explain it as simple as I can. The aperture is a characteristic of lenses and it is usually specified on these as a value like 1:3.5-5.6 (on lenses with zoom capability) or 1:1.8 (on lenses with no zoom). To make an analogy with the human eye, aperture is similar to the pupil. It gives us the ability to set the amount of light that enters through the lens by closing or opening a mechanism similar to the eye pupil. A smaller number means a wider opening so more light will come in. The numbers specified on lenses means the maximum opening of the aperture that can be achieved. For example a value like 1:3.5-5.6 (or f/3.5-f/5.6) on some zoom lenses means that we can get a maximum aperture opening of 1:3.5 (or f/3.5) on no zoom and a 1:5.6 (or f/5.6) one on maximum zoom.
Another very important aspect about aperture is the Depth Of Field (or DOF). Depth of field is a term which refers to the areas of the photograph both in front and behind the main focus point which remain “sharp” (in focus). Depth of field is affected by the aperture. A larger aperture (smaller f-number, e.g. f/2) has a shallow depth of field. Anything behind or in front of the main focus point (the main point that you want to be sharp) will appear blurred. A smaller aperture (larger f-number, e.g. f/11) has a greater depth of field. Objects within a certain range behind or in front of the main focus point will also appear sharp. Here is an example:
The relationship between aperture and exposure time is that a smaller aperture will result in less light that will enter through lenses, so a longer exposure time will be required and vice versa. So you can achieve the same luminosity in a picture using different aperture/exposure time combination. The main reason for playing with these two is again the DOF (Depth of Field). There are many situations when you want a shallow DOF (so a blurred background), like in portraits, macros, etc, and there are situations when you’ll prefer a greater DOF, for example in landscape photography. To master this two in combination will require time and a lot of exercises, but I assure you that it worth the effort.
